Why Aren't You Using Linkbait?

by Kim Roach, 8/17/2007

You've heard of the olden days when people would hunt for potential link partners. Well, those days are long gone and smart web masters are moving on to greater things, while decreasing their reciprocal link building effort.

If you are wondering what this new technique could be, it's actually quite simple... in theory. It is known as linkbaiting. This is a strategy that brings links to a website simply because of the unique and popular content on a website.

With the rise of the blogosphere and social bookmarking sites, all it takes is one person to notice an interesting page and link to a site. Once a link is passed around once, it becomes easier for it to spread further.

Bloggers around the net constanly use linkbait to encourage other bloggers to mention them or to get their content passed around the blogosphere. However, many traditional web masters have not quite latched on to this powerful technique.

The benefits of creating quality, unique, or even controversial content go way beyond what one might first imagine. When a web site offers true value to the visitor, they can create hundreds and even thousands of backlinks without even asking.

Unfortunately, simply having good, quality content on your site doesn't always work. To gain the full potential of linkbaiting, you need a good hook. Some of the most popular ones include:

News
Controversy
Resources and
... Humor

News Hook

Everyone loves to read about industry news. However, the key to attracting some real traffic is to add a twist to the latest news. Find out exactly how it affects your web site visitors. If you just give a rehashing of what everyone else has already said, no one will care.

However, if you inject your own twist or personality into your news story, then you are prepared to catch someone's eye.

Look at CNN.com as an example. What do they offer? They provide the latest news every day of the week. In the world of information that we live in, news is a commodity. Because CNN offers such appealing content, thousands of sites are linking to them. Do you think CNN sent these sites a little email asking if they would be interested in a reciprocal link? Of course not.

Instead, they employ linkbaiting. Their fresh and interesting content automatically encourages other people to link to it. Luckily for us, we can use this same technique on our own web sites.

News is one of the best ways to attract incoming links, especially if the news is controversial.

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